


Clan-uary is Pride Month

by pineaberry



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: F/M, It's sad but in a good way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 17:43:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15801471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pineaberry/pseuds/pineaberry
Summary: There's a ceremony all Cathar are keenly aware of... or at least most of them.





	Clan-uary is Pride Month

**Author's Note:**

> Aric Jorgan x Sartem Roan (F!Republic Trooper)
> 
> It started of as a character bio but I twisted it into a ficlet. 
> 
> In which Jorgan unlocks Sartem’s tragic backstory. There will be Angst and Fluff and just GUSH.

 

She’d been in the cargo hold, searching for the last of the nerf-jerky rations, when Aric walked up to her and shoved a small parcel in her general direction.

“I know you’ve been busy lately, so… ah, here,” Jorgan shifted awkwardly as he always did when he handed her a gift.

It was customary to bring one’s lover gifts and tokens of appreciation. Having grown up with sisters for littermates, he knew all too well how picky and critical Cathar women could be. A potential mate was always judged by the quality of his gifts. Was he a good provider? Was he observant? Was he strong? Was he clever? Was he a good hunter? Were his claws and teeth dull? Was his mane tangled? In a word, was he  _worthy_?

He’d seen more than his share of Cathar men torn to pieces by a single phrase from a woman who found him lacking and refused to tolerate his advances any longer. Then again, the persistent ones ended up with bloody gashes in addition to a wounded pride. Yet, like all the times before, the moment he offered her the clumsily wrapped gift, she gave him a bright smile. She didn’t even know what was in it but there was approval in her eyes… such large blue eyes he’d felt he could drown in them from the moment he first saw her. The knots in his stomach faded away at the sight of them.

“Aric, did you make this?” she asked as she brought out a bracelet of intricately woven leather cords threaded with small tumbled stones. “It’s beautiful.”

It was a simple enough design. He lacked the dexterity for the complex symbol knots that professional jewellers made for festivals. Still he remembered enough of the simpler knots he’d been taught as a kit. Love. Beauty. Friendship. Loyalty.

“I… I wasn’t sure what your colors were, but you seem to like blues so I went with that,” he said apologetically, “there’s a space for your sigil.”

“My what?” she asked giving him a blank look.

“Your sigil. It’s the third month of the year, I figured you’ve been too busy to make anything for the ceremony.”

“Third month ceremony…” she repeated and he was met with another blank stare.

“The ceremony. The Clan Ceremony,” he insisted some annoyance slipping into his tone to mask his own nerves.

“Oh!” she said as though something had finally clicked in place, “yes. Cathar ceremony month. Clan… Clan-uary… I… don’t really know what that is. I don’t have a Clan. Anymore… -ish…”

“Everyone has a clan,” Jorgan said as though she’d declared there was no such thing as breathing, “even foundlings. If you’re a Cathar, you have a clan.”

“Oh. Sorry I just- It never really came up,” she replied looking sheepish.

A sense of wrongness filled him. She really didn’t know who her people were. How could she not know? It was… well it was sacrilege that’s what it was! Even orphans knew their clan name. This was a part of their identity; of her identity!

“Your parent’s never told you, sir?” he asked reigning in his outrage, “I’m sure we can find something about Clan Roan in the Republic records.”

“Bit hard for them to do that from a grave,” she mused looking at his gift absently and running her thumb over the polished stones. “Roan is a human name and I doubt you’ll find anything flattering about them in the Republic Database.”

Aric frowned and Sartem could all but feel it on her skin. She sighed and took a seat on a nearby supply crate before she patted the spot next to her.

“I guess I should have told you this before, there’s really no easy way to explain it,” she said as he took a seat next to her. “I don’t know my parent’s names but I know what they did and who they were. Before I was born there was a schism growing between the Cathar and the Republic. There were prominent people in my parents’ clan that were adamant about their loyalty to the Republic. However, my father shared some misgivings about the Republic’s commitment to the Cathar. He believed the Republic had used our people against the Mandalorians resulting in our near-extinction. The resulting tragedy ensured our continued dependence on the Republic.”

“That was over three-hundred years ago,” Aric protested.

“Yes, and he believed the Cathar were finally strong enough to make a choice, whether it be Empire or Republic, he felt we should be able to choose,” she said before growing silent for a moment. Never once did she look up from the stones in his bracelet, “my father was a very influential member of his Clan and my mother very eloquent. They publicly debated the opposition and afterwards members of all the other Clans began to consider his words. There began to be murmurs against taking Cathar loyalty for granted. Eventually, the Republic noticed.”

Aric grimaced. It wasn’t lost on him what ‘being noticed’ implied.

“They sent both my parents to Belsavis and scrubbed their records. They were to be held in stasis fields indefinitely. I think… I think my father knew my mother was pregnant because he gave his life so that she could escape. I was born in an ice-cavern somewhere on Belsavis. My mother and siblings were too weak to survive the cold. I would have died too but I was found by an escaped prisoner. Captain Roan was an Imperial strategist sentenced to life imprisonment. I spent around seven years on Belsavis hunting, playing, and hiding among the ice. Captain Roan was kind to me. He named me after his own deceased daughter. I still remember the stories he told me every night. Sometimes they were about the stars, or Sith Lords, or strange planets. Sometimes he sang to me because he said I made him smile,” she looked sad at the memory, “I think he wanted a better life for me. In the end, I think he knew what it would cost him. One day, he told me to pack my things and walked me into the nearest Republic outpost. When we got there… They kept hitting him… They didn’t know him, he was unarmed, and they just kept hitting him… I wanted to bite and scratch and protect him, but he ordered me to stay put. Eventually they took him away and I never saw him again.”

Her eyes burned with tears, but they didn’t fall.

“Someone brought me to Coruscant… I was placed in a home along with other children with unfortunate parentage. Marsalyn was our keeper. She was an older Twi’lek woman who had been rescued from the slave camps by the Republic. She was very kind and patient, but she was forbidden from teaching us anything that would divert our allegiance to the Republic. I remember she used to tell us terrible stories of what the Empire did to her family and how lucky I was that the Empire hadn’t gotten to me first otherwise I would have been enslaved. ‘Pretty Cathar girl like you would get snapped up in an instant. They like to keep your kind like pets.’ She used to say. I grew up wondering how someone as kind and clever as Captain Roan could do something so terrible as to end up in Belsavis. Did the same man who sang me to sleep and tell me stories about the stars also burn that number into Marsalyn’s neck? If the Empire was full of evil selfish people who wanted to enslave me, why did he give his life so I could be free?”

She held his gift in her hands if only to keep her fingers from trembling.

“I was fifteen when Marsalyn fell ill. She tried to hide it from us, always putting on a brave face. A decade spent in an arms factory without protection from poisonous chemicals finally caught up to her in the end. She had no family, no children. We had been her younglings. Without Marsalyn we were orphans again; wards of the Republic. They sent us off to the military academy. One of the foundlings I grew up with was a brilliant slicer. By all accounts she should have been snapped up by the SIS, but she was a Sith pureblood. Defections by pretty faces like Dorne are distrusted but still welcomed for their usefulness. Ailsa had known nothing but the Republic her entire life, yet she was feared and hated for her species. The SIS wanted nothing to do with her. It was Ailsa who began to search for the past our Keepers kept from us. She was the one who found out how my father died and why. She was the one who helped me piece together my past and showed me a report stating how my mother and siblings were found. Prisoner TX-54987 shot to death during a firefight and TX-54988 found dead of hypothermia along with four stillborn kits. Their names are lost but I remember. I know I don’t live like them or follow their customs. I know they would be disappointed that their deaths were meaningless, but I haven’t forgotten them. Mother, Father, Captain Roan, Marsalyn even Ailsa… they’re all gone now, but I remember them.”

Aric kept searching her face as though to find a clue as to what she was feeling. He didn’t know what to say in the face of such knowledge. The Republic had stripped her of everything: her status, her dignity, her family, her Clan. Only to reshape her in their image and dress it up as a second chance at life. The experience would have made anyone else bitter and angry, but from what he had seen, it had only made her kind. His brow furrowed and he wished he had the words to express his own regret and sorrow at her loss.

“I’m… sorry… it must be difficult in our line of work…”

“Empire, Republic, good, evil, or neutral, they were all of them people. We’re all just people in the end, Aric. There’s bad people who do good things, and good people who do bad things. Believing every Imperial is inherently evil only serves the people who profit from this war. It makes us easier to control,” she said with a sigh, “Havoc is not an execution squad. Under my command, it never will be.”

He tentatively placed a hand over hers and she finally looked up to meet his gaze.

“I’m just a soldier. I can’t say I understand everything, or that I agree with everything the Republic does, but it brought me to you,” he whispered, “and as selfish as that is, I’m glad.”

“Yes, well that… is incredibly selfish, Aric,” she smiled at him before kissing his lips softly.

He could sense her affection through some inexplicable combination of scent and touch. She found him worthy. He could not contain the purr that bubbled from his chest at the realization. Later he would curse at the deeply embarrassing show of emotion, but for now, he was too happy to care.

“I’m glad I met you too,” she murmured nuzzling under his chin as he instinctively wrapped his arm around her, “happy Clan-uary, Aric.”

He snorted and gave a rumbling laugh. “For kriffs sake, don’t call it that-”

He then felt fingertips dig past the soft fur under his jawline and scratch against his skin just so. Were it anyone else, just thinking about doing something like that would result in lost fingers if the loss of an entire arm. Yet with her, the rest of his protest melted into a loud rumbling purr. It was childish, it was humiliating, and he didn’t give a damn. He held her tightly and she felt as though she were encased in a warm, pleasantly rumbling cocoon.

“Thank you for the gift Aric,” Sartem said as she nuzzled his neck.

His piercing eyes closed blissfully at the motion.

She had accepted him. Him. Not Jonas Balkar with his stupid smiling face. Not all the leering Senators and soldiers. She’d chosen him, and it made Aric feel invincible.

Was this what finding a life-mate felt like? They weren’t officially mated, not yet, but even now he didn’t think there would ever be another like her.

Sartem had spent her entire life hounded by loss, yet she somehow made it out untarnished. Every Cathar should feel as though they had a place in their Clan where they belonged. He vowed help her find that place. They’d all failed her: their people, her Clan, her government. However, if she allowed it, he would spend his entire life making up for it.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on my Tumblr. Eventually I'll revisit this universe and add more to it. Until then, feel free to look me up on Tumblr (pineaberry) for more shenanigans!


End file.
